Political Quotes

“Thank you. I appreciate your leadership on this issue and your scheduling this Special Order. Dr. James Hansen did retire. He is considered the foremost climatologist in the world. As I understand it, he shared in a Nobel Prize in 2007 on this general type of issue. He's been the leading proponent of watching out for the future. The Keystone pipeline, he's the clarion call, I guess, on the problems that that would cause to the environment in the future. Because the tar sands, to mine, is a very carbon-intensive activity. You take away the forest. You also have to use a lot of water and a lot of energy in the production. Just the production of the tar sands causes great damage to the environment, let alone the potential for damage to our country when they would travel through the pipelines. Then, when they're burnt, that's, I guess, lighting the carbon bomb and letting it go off. But Dr. Hanson studied climate and was one of the first to warn on this issue. He has retired, so we will have his voice. I live in Memphis. It's kind of the center of the region, Oklahoma over, for tornadoes. Tornadoes have been much, much more prominent in the United States. This just isn't a quirk. Mother Nature can have her times and certain variances in her schedule, but it's obvious what's been happening with the increase in tornadoes, the droughts, the floods. The Mississippi River, it's been the lowest it's ever been in spots--and it's flooded.…”